Elvis Threatened to Blow His Bodyguard’s ‘F***ing Head Off’ for Trying to Get Some Sleep 

Elvis Presley considered his bodyguards friends, but he was quick to lash out at them when they didn’t behave the way he wanted them to. Elvis’ bodyguards worked long, exhausting hours and often had to field calls from him when they were trying to sleep. Once, the singer threatened to kill bodyguard Red West for not acting on his demand quickly enough.

Elvis threatened his bodyguard when he wasn’t immediately able to help him

In 1973, Elvis’ voice gave out during a performance, and he needed his doctor to clear his throat of congestion. After this, he began seeing Dr. Boyer daily to clear out his throat. He even requested to do this at odd, unscheduled times.

“One night, after he had kept us up all day, we finally hit the sack,” Red West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? “I took a sleeping pill and was just dozing off. It must have been about nine in the morning. I knew it was ridiculous to expect to get any sleep. Suddenly, I got a telephone call. He wanted to see Dr. Boyer right away. I may have said something like, ‘Hey, man, you don’t go on until tonight. What is the reason for getting it done so early?’ Anyway, he was bugged or something. I told him I had just taken a sleeping pill, and he said, ‘Well, go back to bed.’ I knew the tone in which he said that. He was sort of saying I was letting him down.”

Hearing this tone, Red immediately got out of bed and went to Elvis’ room. He was angry and arrived at the room to find an equally angry Elvis holding a gun.

“I hurriedly got dressed and went down the hallway and into his suite,” Red said. “Sonny [West] was there and he could see I was pissed off. Well, Elvis goes into his room and grabs his M-16. He says, ‘I’m going to blow your f***ing head off.'”

The musician’s mood changed suddenly

Though Red West had a gun pointed at him, he did not back down.

“Shoot, you motherf*****,” he said. “Go ahead, shoot … We only have one life to give you. Shoot.”

Sonny West, a fellow bodyguard and Red West’s cousin, believed that something terrible was about to happen. Both men were upset, and Elvis was on enough medication that he could not think clearly. Luckily, his mood changed at the last moment.

“I thought something was really going down,” Sonny said. “Red was angry and Elvis had the gun and he is bugged. Then the next moment, Elvis turns away and winks at me, like it was nothing at all. That’s how quick that guy can change.”

Elvis eventually threatened to hire someone to kill his bodyguards

This was far from the only time Elvis threatened one of his bodyguards. He was in a similar situation with Red West only a few months later. 

He eventually fired Red and Sonny West. After this, he learned that his former bodyguards were writing a tell-all book about him. Elvis became so incensed that it was the only thing he could talk about. He eventually began plotting to have them killed.

“One time I said, ‘Look, they’re not worth it. And anyway, you know it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t even change how you feel about them. You know that deep down you really care about them, and that’s what really gets you,'” Elvis’ cousin Billy Smith said in the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick. “And he broke down and cried. It wasn’t just a few tears. He was sobbing. And I cried with him because I couldn’t stand to see him in that kind of pain … But then he said, ‘Goddamn them! … If they hurt my career, I will have them killed.'”